


Bitter Taste

by warboyziri



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, POV Annabeth Chase, POV First Person, Percy who?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24946525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warboyziri/pseuds/warboyziri
Summary: Annabeth and Reyna dance
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	Bitter Taste

The Bitter Hearts party on Valentine’s Day was a sad event, to begin with, but I had just been dumped by an entitled cellist douche with an IQ smaller than his miniature dick, so it was basically  _ my thing _ that year, right down to the big heart-shaped piñata that had been calling to me since I stepped in. But I got busy playing Emma Woodhouse and introducing my dance class friends to Nico’s drug dealer friends, watching them mingle and chugging down gin smugly. Then, a finger tapped on my shoulder.

Reyna stood behind me, looking absolutely devastating in a black dress made for a magazine page, her hair blown out, her eyes done up all smokey. I was in the presence of a siren.

I took a minute to compose myself and addressed her with raised eyebrows. “Reyna Arellano”, I said to her, “I almost didn’t recognize you, with this steep escalation in tight clothes you’re displaying.”

A coy side-smile — Reyna’s speciality — was directed at me. “The way you talk, Annabeth”, she said, “No one can tell you’re not from the romantically initiated.”

“Fuck you, I’m totally from the romantically initiated”, I said, my words slurring slightly, courtesy of gin and tonic no. 5, “I was raised on bodice ripper books and the  Sandra Bullock Rom-Com  universe.”

“I can tell.”

I made a face at her and offered her my drink. “But what brings you here? Business or pleasure?”

She sipped my drink and regarded me with a shrug. “Well, I’m on leave from the New Rome chapter of the Brooders Association. Thought I’d drop by and see what the real world looks like.”

I thought to pinch myself to check if this was really happening. “Is this really happening?” I check with her instead. “This whole, you talking, and me talking, and you talking more thing, taking place for real?”

I grabbed the chance to stare at her unabashedly as she laughed. “Don’t be so strenuous.”

I grabbed her by her arm. “Who are you?” I whispered.

“Annabeth, I will leave.”

“Blink twice if you’re in there, Reyna.”

“Goodbye.”

“No, no, no, okay, okay”, I cried, digging in my heels as she tried to walk away, “I’m done, okay, don’t go.”

“I don’t even know why I came”, she said, sighing.

I took the drink from her and kept it on the counter beside me. “Well, I don’t want to assume anything, but maybe it was because all your fellow centurions need some alone time for some Valentine’s Day sexual activities and you thought you’d hit two birds with a stone by coming here — getting out of their way and getting some for yourself.”

Her mouth twitched but she glared at me. “I don’t believe you, sometimes.”

I flashed a know-it-all looking smile. “You won’t believe me at all when you’ve seen me dance”, I said to her, “come on, snooty girl.”

To my utter surprise, Reyna let herself get dragged to the floor without complaint. She slid a lazy arm around my waist, I settled mine somewhere on her (bared, _bared_ ) back. Just like that, we started to slow dance. Me swaying with Reyna. Reyna gazing at me from behind those long, feathery,  _ mascaraed _ eyelashes. 

_ I’m slow dancing with Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano _ , a faint voice in the back of my head said to no one in particular.

“You’re not  _ that _ broody”, I said, “Come to think of it, you’d need some solid tantrum game to pull off the whole ‘ _ cash me outside, how bou dah _ ’ thing.”

She shook her head, “I don’t even  _ want _ to know what that means.”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean,  _ sure _ ?”

I laughed, “Reyna, you really need to relax. Like,  _ really _ .”

Reyna clenched her jaw, and my knees threatened to buckle. “Let’s make a deal”, she said, guiding me across the floor, “I’ll make an effort to brave through this without too much complaint if you promise not to talk about brooding or  _ Valentine’s Day sexual activities _ for the rest of the night.”

“Okay, you have a deal”, I said, “but I won’t stop talking. I’m a bit drunk.” 

She twirled me around. “You can talk.”

“Awesome.”

“Whatever.”

I sighed and hooked my arms around her neck, sliding us closer. She hesitated for the smallest of moments, and then slid her own hands further around my waist and rested her head on my shoulder. We were the same height in heels, so I figured she was pretty comfortable. Except I was an active volcano of collapsing nerves and nothing else.

I wanted to ask her things, to lift her head in my hands and force her to answer me. There was so much I wanted to know. Who taught her how to slow dance, what she was doing her if all she ever seemed to want to do is serve her legion. Why she avoids everyone. If she misses home. But Reyna was the brave praetor. I was just a weak, frozen _graecus_.

“Did you finish that book of yours?” she asked, so close to my ear that everything vibrated and I violently choked down a sigh.

“Which one?”

“That dramatic raven something book about overly powerful tarot reading.”

“ _ The Raven King _ ”, I said, firmly, feeling her silent laughter on my shoulder bones. “Yes, I finished it.”

“Was it as good as you expected?”

“Even better.”

“Did the ending suck?”

“So much, I wanted to throw the book out the window”, I said, and she laughed again.

“It’s alright, Chase, you’ll recover”, she said. I loved the sound of my last name on her lips. It was perfect, her nearly-gone accent, her voice, the uncontrollable urge to make out with her that arose every time she said it.

Her arms were tightening on my waist. My thighs collided with each other in an effort by my body to have  _ some  _ shame.

“I don’t recover”, I replied, draining my voice of emotion just to be safe, “I stumble around, look for something to continue living for and then masochistically latch onto another book that I know will break my heart and stomp on its pieces all over again.”

“Gods”, she swore, “you’re so dramatic.”

I pulled us apart a bit to look at her as we swayed along to the music. “It’s passes time.”

“Until you get to go back to war-torn countries and save kids from drone strikes.”

“That is a dramatized definition, but my hero-complex is asking me to let it slide.”

Reyna’s face is filled with her bright grin. “Are you like this there?”

“I’m like this everywhere.”

“Must be a task to get you to focus.”

“Oh, I can be focused when I want to be”, I said, in a voice lower than I had intended, “When I want something, I like to get it.”

It hit me when I watched her blush that that last sentence had become sexually charged without express permission from my brain. That, in my opinion, was the end for me. Except I was forgetting that I was trying to seduce a warrior. And warriors didn’t back down.

“Oh yeah?” Reyna muttered back, “Then how come I had to come to this shitty party as a  _ last resort _ without any  _ focus _ ed invitation?”

My breathing. Had stopped. For good. “How do you know it wasn’t actually my grand plan?”

“Because I know you, Chase”, she said, pulling me closer, “If you’d had the guts to plan it, it would’ve been a spectacle.”

The grin on my face was asking to be wiped. So she did. With her lips.

And that’s the story of how I bagged the praetor of the twelfth legion in a singles party on February fourteenth.


End file.
